Alaska Sees Traffic Increase for January

System-wide traffic for Alaska Air Group, expressed in revenue passenger miles, or RPMs, increased by 6.9% year-over-year, up to 3.8 billion RPMs from 3.6 billion in January of 2016.

Capacity was 4.9 billion available seat miles, or ASMs, a year-over-year increase of 7.6% from 4.6 billion ASMs.

System-wide load factor for the month was 78.1%, a 0.5 percentage point decrease from January 2016’s load factor of 78.6%.

The numbers include flights operated by Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, which the carrier acquired last December, as well as Horizon Air and those operated under third party capacity purchase agreements.

The big news in the hotel world was the 2017 opening of the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski in Havana, the city’s first proper grande dame of a hotel to open in the island nation. Located in the historic Manzana de Gómez building, Cuba’s first shopping mall in the center of Old Havana, the hotel is truly in a class of its own.
An oasis in a city that’s somewhat crumbling and …

A more complete story of how a Horizon Air employee was able to steal, fly, and subsequently crash an aircraft taken from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Friday evening is beginning to emerge as details come to light.
Richard B. Russell flew a Bombardier Dash 8 – Q400 turboprop plane for almost an hour over Puget Sound, even performing aerobatics, until it crashed on Ketron Island, off the shore of Steilacoom. Mr. Russell, …